Knight to Retire and Scholtz to Succeed Him as Chief of AAUP Academic Freedom Staff

By Jordan E. Kurland

With great regret, and with equally great appreciation for his outstanding AAUP career, the Association reports the decision of Jonathan Knight to retire as of June 30. Jon leaves after thirty-one years as a key member of the AAUP staff, the last half dozen as director of programs in academic freedom, tenure, and governance. His capacity for focusing on complex tasks and seeing them through is evident from his immense legacy in his major area of concentration, “Committee A” casework and policy development.

Over the years, Jonathan has handled more than a thousand individual cases and complaints, and he staffed thirty-two formal investigations. While Jon has had a hand in just about every Committee A policy statement issued during the last three decades, perhaps his largest contributions to policy development have been in the area of academic freedom and government restraints, notable among them his service as principal staff officer for the post- 9/11 Special Committee on Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis. He has also concentrated on restraints on academic freedom coming from religious and business interests and on academic boycotts. In addition, he has worked to educate faculty members and others on issues of academic freedom and due process, tenure, and ethics, as is evident from his recent publication, Navigating Faculty Appointments: Questions and Answers.

Jonathan’s AAUP work has by no means been confined to the programs he has directed, however. Since 1979 he has staffed the Committee on Professional Ethics, and he has been chiefly responsible for formulating statements on plagiarism and on professors assigning their own texts to students. He served for fifteen years as Academe’s book review editor. He took over a member benefits program that did little for members  and less for the Association, turning it into a program that benefits the individual member and AAUP coffers alike. Finally, a last-minute task for Jon each spring for many years now has been the staffing of our Annual Meeting Resolutions Committee. Someone else will have to see to it this year that a suitable resolution on Jonathan Knight is produced.

Joining the staff as director of programs in academic freedom, tenure, and governance on September 1 will be Gregory F. Scholtz, professor of English at Wartburg College in Iowa. (Associate General Secretary Jordan E. Kurland will serve on an interim basis during July and August.) Greg, who has been a highly active AAUP member for sixteen years, has an impressive record of Association service and leadership at the chapter, conference, and national levels. While still new at Wartburg, he together with a senior colleague revived a moribund AAUP chapter that within two years won the national AAUP Beatrice G. Konheim Award for its “vigorous defense of faculty rights.” Greg has held every chapter office, from treasurer to president. He has served throughout as newsletter editor (producing fifty-eight newsletters in that capacity) and as membership coordinator (recruiting and retaining the majority of the Wartburg faculty as AAUP members).

Greg participated in the work of the Iowa conference from the outset. Chairing its Committee A from 1995 to 2004, he handled over two dozen cases in the state, developing a close relationship with national AAUP staff members in the process. He also became editor of the conference’s Iowa Academe, and he worked with successive conference presidents in planning and carrying out the organization’s semiannual meetings. He participated in meetings of the Assembly of State Conferences, and in 2001 was elected ASC liaison to the national Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. He also served a term as the ASC’s vice chair.

Greg’s involvement on the national level began in 1995 with his appointment to the Committee on College and University Governance. He was appointed chair of the committee in 2004 and is currently serving his second term in that office. Through his governance work, he developed an interest in accreditation, serving on the joint subcommittee that developed two of the reports published in the March–April 2008 issue of Academe and becoming a consultant-evaluator for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association. Greg has also served as a speaker and panelist at Association-sponsored regional workshops and, for the last three years, at AAUP Summer Institute workshops. Last but far from least, Greg has not only been affiliated with Committee A as ASC liaison, but also served on five Committee A investigating committees, four of them as chair. One of the investigations is still in process, and Greg intends to complete and submit his report on it before he comes to Washington to assume his new responsibilities.

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